Monday, April 29, 2013

5 For 5

Starting pitcher:
Zo

We missed the first inning - 18 games in, so I thought now that each of our starters, on whom so much of our fortunes ride, has had 5 starts, we could look and see if we could ascertain anything from the numbers (mining data, I think they call it).

Hope this is legible, I really don't know how to make a table on this thing. What can we glean from this? First, a disclaimer - it is a small sample size, so it is not worthwhile to parse this too finely. Only the major distinctions are worth noting, and those can turn around quickly. First - our starters have given us a pretty good effort. They ahve averaged at least 5 innings per start, in spite of at least one big meltdown per pitcher (Maddy excepted). Second - Matt has given up a few homers, but other than that, has not pitched as badly as his record might indicate. His WHIP is lower than anyone but Maddy's, although is BAA is not what you want to see. In a small sample size, particularly, it is not just how many hits, walks and home runs you might have given up, but where you have given them up relative to one another. Still - earned runs, 21 is a lot for the young season (Matt and Ryan). We all know Tim had a meltdown on April 14, but, overall, his walks make him look worse than any other stat. Tim looks hard to hit - a lot of K, a lot of walks. Fewer walks - Tim lasts longer - tends to win games. Barry Zito has given up the fewest home runs, and not too many walks - that's good. Ryan seems to be the one to worry about - although we expect so much more from Matt Aces Cain. Is Ryan a bit fried from an abbreviated spring and WBC play? Not sure, but here's hoping he can bring those hits and BAA down.OK! Keep the ball in the yard tonight, Matt, and tighten up that defense behind him. He does not deserve Caining.

The software is a little clunky and has some bugs (hey, it's free). I've had the best luck using Courier, that is, a font with equal spacing (all characters same width). And keeping the column widths small. I tried to fiddle with your post but no luck yet. If you don't mind, I'll try to edit it again.

Unless you want to play with HTML, which I don't, I don't bother with tables. I just use the Windows snipping tool to cut out pieces of existing tables and paste them in as jpegs. Or I use the table-generating options (under SHARE) at Baseball-Reference. That's the best, but takes some twiddling.

You can make tables in Word or Excel and export them to Blogger. You have to be in the HTML mode (not "Compose") in the editor. I think you can use tab-delimited files, or text, or even HTML. Just have to try.

I converted your table to Courier New and reduced the font size. I tried to increase the font size of the rest of the text, but nothing doing. Like I said, the software is buggy. I make changes all the time and then have something else show up or the change not appear at all.